Daniel Abraham - The Dragon's Path

“Fair point.”

They slipped into the darkness. The cold was bitter, and Marcus’s breath fogged before him. The cobbles seemed made from ice, and the smell of death came from the cart, low and coppery and familiar as his own name. At his side, Master Kit pulled, the man’s breath coming fast as panting. The living carried the dead through the black streets, guided by starlight and memory. Drying blood caked Marcus’s side, plucking at his wounds with every step. He pressed himself forward. It seemed like a slow eternity, pain in his fingers giving way to numbness, and then pain again. Behind him, he heard Cary’s voice suddenly rise in bawdy song, and then, like a river reed playing harmony to a trumpet, Cithrin’s voice with hers. He looked over his shoulder. A block behind them, their lanterns held high above them, two scantily dressed women faced a patrol of queensmen. Marcus stopped, the handcart slowing as he dropped from the lead.

“Captain,” Master Kit whispered urgently.

“This is idiocy,” Marcus said. “This isn’t your comedy, and that street’s not a stage. Those are men with swords and power. Putting women in front of them and hoping for the best is—”

“What we’ve done, Captain,” Master Kit said. “It’s what we’ve done, and this is why. You should pull the cart now.”

In the light of the lanterns, Cary twirled once, laughing. One of the queensmen draped a cloak over Cithrin’s shoulders. Marcus realized he’d drawn his knife without knowing it. They can’t be trusted, Marcus thought, looking at the guardians of civil peace in their cloaks of green and gold. You can’t trust them.

“Captain?” Yardem asked.

“Go. Keep going,” Marcus said and forced himself to turn away.

The break in the seawall was on the far eastern edge of the city. A stone walkway white with snow and gull droppings and black with ice and night looked out over an invisible ocean. Gulls nested in cracks in the walls around them and on the cliffs below. And there, a single crack, no wider than a doorway where the city had constructed a siege weapon long since turned to rust to defend it against an enemy as dead as the bodies Marcus hauled.

They moved quickly and in silence. Yardem strode to the edge and lofted the corpse from his shoulder and into the grey predawn mist. Then Smit and Hornet, like men helping a drunken companion over the threshold. Then, together, the handcart with its human cargo. And last, Sandr and Opal, the woman limping under the weight of her burden, came to the edge. The last of the knife men vanished. There was no splash. Only the hush of the wind, the complaints of the birds, and faraway muttering of the surf.

“Yardem,” Marcus said. “Get back to the rooms. I’ll find Cithrin.”

“Yes, sir,” the Tralgu said, and vanished into the gloom.

“We’ll need money to pay their fines,” Smit said. “Can we afford that?”

“Seems wrong to charge them for public lewdness,” Sandr said. “Most places you have to pay extra for it.”

“I think we can do what we must,” Master Kit said shortly. “You all go back to the cart. I believe the captain and I have some last business. Opal, please stay with us.”

The players stood for a moment and then walked slowly away. Marcus listened to their footsteps fade. Sandr said something, and Smit replied darkly. Marcus couldn’t make out the words. Master Kit and Opal stood, deeper black in the gloom all around. Marcus wished he could see their faces, and was also glad that he couldn’t.

“I can’t take her to the queensmen,” Marcus said.

“I know,” Master Kit said.

“I didn’t tell anyone else,” Opal said. “The only people who know about the banker girl’s fortune are the ones who knew before.”

“Unless one of your swimming friends down there told someone,” Marcus said.

“Unless that,” Opal admitted.

“It seems to me there are only two choices here, Captain. You won’t appeal to the city’s justice. Either Opal walks free, or she doesn’t.”

“That’s truth,” Marcus said.

“I would very much like you to let her walk away,” Master Kit said. “She’s already lost her place with me, and we’ve helped protect your work here. You’re hurt, but Yardem Hane isn’t. Or Cithrin. I won’t say there’s no harm done, but I hope there’s room for mercy.”

“Thank you, Kit,” Opal said.

Marcus squinted up. The eastern sky had begun to show the first faint lightening of dawn. The stars in the great arch above him still glittered and shone, but the faintest of them had vanished. More would go out in the next few minutes. He’d been told that, in truth, the stars were always there, only during the day you couldn’t see them. He’d heard the same thing said about the souls of the dead. He didn’t believe that either.

“I’d need to know she wouldn’t come after us again,” he said.

“I swear it,” Opal said, jumping at his words. “I swear to all the gods that I won’t make another try.”

Master Kit made a sudden, pained sound, as if someone had struck him. Marcus took a step toward him, but when the man spoke, his voice was clear and strong and unutterably sad.

“Oh, my poor, dear Opal.”

“Kit,” she said, and there was an intimacy in the way she formed the word that made Marcus reassess everything he thought he knew about the two and their past.

“She’s lying, Captain,” Master Kit said. “I wish that she wasn’t, but you have my word that she is. If she leaves here now, it’s with the intention to come back.”

“Well, then,” Marcus said. “That’s a problem.”

The shadow that was Opal turned and tried to bolt, but Marcus stepped in front of her. She clawed at his eyes and made an inexpert try to knee his groin.

“Please. He’s wrong. Kit’s wrong. Please let me go.”

The desperation in her voice, the fear, made him want to step aside. He was a soldier and a mercenary, not the kind of feral thug who killed women for the joy of it. He moved half a step back, but then remembered Cithrin again, sitting on the cot with her legs drawn to her knees, facing the swords of the patrol with awkward song. He’d promised to protect her if he could. Not only when it was pleasant.

He knew what had to happen next.

“I’m sorry about this,” Marcus said.

Geder had known, of course, that Klin’s favorites had been given the better accommodations, and that men like himself had taken the leavings. The scale of the insult, however, hadn’t been clear. He sat on a low divan upholstered in silk. High windows spilled light over the floors like God upending a milk jug. Incense touched the air with vanilla and patchai. The goldwork and gems that glowed over the fire grate hadn’t been wrenched apart in the sack. Even before the soldiers of Antea had taken the streets below, it had been understood that the prince’s house was sacrosanct. Not because it was the prince’s, but because it was Ternigan’s. And then Klin’s. And now, unthinkably, his own.

“My Lord Protector?”

Geder jumped to his feet as if he’d been caught touching something he shouldn’t. The chief of household was an old Timzinae slave, his dark scales greying and cracked. He wore the grey and blue of House Palliako now, or as close to them as could be scrounged.

“Your secretaries await, sir,” the Timzinae said.

“Yes,” Geder said, plucking at the black leather cloak he’d brought from his old rooms. “Yes, of course. Take me there.”

The orders had come three days before. The Lord Marshal had called Alan Klin back to Camnipol, to the despair of some, the delight of others, and the surprise of no one. The astonishing development was who Ternigan had chosen as his replacement until such time as King Simeon named a permanent governor. Geder had read the order ten times at least, checked the seal and signature, and then read it again. Sir Geder Palliako, son of Viscount of Rivenhalm Lerer Palliako, was now Protector of Vanai. He had the order still, folded in a pouch at his belt like a religious relic: mysterious and awesome and entirely unsafe.